Just to jump in here too – the app is clearly a labour of love on many fronts but the love appears to have been poured into the design of the fonts and the app guide and the supporting website rather than the image quality of the photos that the app takes. I so wanted to love this app – it has an apparently great pedigree, superb marketing but the product is a real let down. The reason for this is, in my opinion, not managing expectations very well – overpromising in the marketing blurb and underdelivering in the product.

For instance – the blub claims that the app has a, ‘unique gestural control scheme’. No. It doesn’t. The Moment photography app is one, among many, that has a gestural control system 9and implements it far better because with halide you get some ludicrous coloured slider for exposure for instance which tells you absolutely nothing at all…

It also says there is, ‘a blazing fast histogram’. Erm…that’s great but why make it so ludicrously big?! And how is it faster than say, Pro Cameras histogram. Which is also implemented better there – with clear peaking indicated by a coloured histogram…

Instant review sounds cool but doesn’t actually work. So that’s brilliant.

You also talk about special haptic feedback. Again – where is that?! Pro Camera, Muse Cam and so many more all implement brilliant haptic feedback – you slide your exposure controls or your white balance and you get a satisfying little click as though you were using a real camera.

And finally – focus peaking. This is good. But why have focus peaking if this is a camera app that’s meant to sit between the native camera app and the more, ‘pro’ ones (some of which I have mentioned above). It doesn’t quite make sense. Why have pro features such as focus peaking and a histogram? Oh and one last thing – finding the white balance presets is not intuitive at all.

I am sorry to sound so negative. I get that building a new app like this in such a crowded market must be ever so hard. But if you’re going to go all out and talk about what a premium and unique product you’re offering then I really think you need to be absolutely certain that it really is unique (and there’s really nothing in Halide that you can’t find in other apps and implemented far better too). I think this is important if you are going to charge a premium price (£2.99 is a lot – more than that is insane in such a market).

Clearly a labour of love and how one goes about creating a unique photo app today I just don’t know to be honest as there are just so many brilliant ones around. Maybe I was expecting too much. But I was ever so disappointed with this…